Conference Program

This contribution advances and deepens the reflections developed in a previous study conducted within the three-year research project PON Green (2022–2025), “The Ecological Challenge: Innovative Educational Practices”. The earlier contribution reconstructed the principal trajectories of national and international debates on teacher professionalism in education for sustainable development (ESD) (Ilardo & Salinaro, 2023). Building on that groundwork, the current study shifts the analytical focus and it advances a critical examination of the conceptual and normative architectures that currently shape ESD, expanding the analysis beyond existing frameworks. Drawing on decolonial prospective (Stain et al., 2023) and critical pedagogy (Giroux, 1983), the contribution analyses the epistemological assumptions embedded in dominant sustainability discourses, with particular attention to competency-based models in secondary education. The study develops two interrelated lines of inquiry. Firstly, the proposal reconsiders the reference frameworks guiding education for sustainable development, with particular attention to competency-based models and their normative implications. Secondly, it addresses the ongoing debate on sustainability competencies and their impact on the construction of teachers’ professional identity. The analysis conceptualizes competencies as historically and culturally situated formations, embedded within specific configurations of power and value systems, and examines their contextual and normative dimensions. This reflection is conducted through an intercultural and critical perspective that understands the ecological question as intrinsically intertwined with diversity, inclusion, global justice, and transnational interdependencies, within European educational contexts shaped by colonial legacies and multicultural configurations (Nijhawan, 2024; Stein et al., 2020). Within this framework, this critical reorientation carries significant implications for how teacher professionalism is conceptualised and implemented (Singh et al., 2025). If sustainability education is embedded within historically situated regimes of knowledge and power, then teachers cannot be positioned merely as neutral implementers of predefined competencies. Instead, they are called to mediate plural epistemologies and engage reflexively with the normative assumptions embedded in policy frameworks. From this perspective, the critical frameworks adopted in this contribution perform a dual function. Analytically, they illuminate the tensions and contradictions of ESD policies and competency discourses. Practically, they inform transformative interventions in teacher education and school practice, linking sustainability competencies to intercultural dialogue and climate-related emotions (Butler, 2025; Voşki et al., 2024; Vercammen et al., 2023).